A Portal for God's Peace We warmly welcome single persons, people of all races and families of every kind.   Sunday Service: Holy Eucharist at 9:30 am Child care is available   Church of Our Saviour 191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094 Map and Directions   Tel: 201-863-1449 Fax: 201-863-1474 Mark A. Lewis, Vicar MLewis@secaucus.org Dorothy Fowlkes Pastoral Associate   This page revised 14 Oct 01 http://www.secaucus.org/ oursaviour		The Church of Our Saviour in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links ----------------Leave frames---------------------   Rebirth trumps tragedy Reflections on the lessons for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost 14 October 2001 By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar Ruth 1:8-19a / Psalm113 2 Timothy 2:8-15 / Luke 17:11-19   I called Edna last week when I got back from Texas to see how last Sunday morning went. "It was great," she said. "The lessons were so appropriate." Well, there's a lesson in itself. About why scripture is such a big deal. The amazing thing about the Bible is that it is ALWAYS so appropriate. It takes up the color of the times and the state of being of the community or individual who reads it. And in every environment -- over thousands of years -- it speaks. The very same readings that seem so spot-on today, and here have seemed equally insightful halfway around the world 500 years ago Come on. Today we heard about a group of widows trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces of their lives. And a story about a public health threat posed by a gang of people spreading an infectious disease. The Greek philosophers spoke often about something called "the examined life". Aristotle, famously, said that "the unexamined life is not worth living". Really, I suppose, living an examined life amounts to not much more than reflecting on life's wonder and tragedy. Not taking it all for granted. Not acting bored and jaded by life. Well, we all know more today about tragedy than we knew a few weeks ago. But the trick is to keep that in balance with the wonder. We're not Greeks -- mainly, at least -- here. We're Christians. So, we can talk about Aristotle's idea in the words Jesus used for much the same thing. We have to live a resurrection life. Reflecting on how life comes out of death just as sure as day follows night. In our lifetimes, we have been no strangers to large-scale tragedy. It has taken the form of global and local wars, the threat of nuclear holocaust, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the ecological peril of the earth, the plight of refugees, child abuse, and the brutal treatment of women in many countries. Dwelling on even one of these catastrophes could destroy anyone's hopeful wonder. The sum of them can stagger our imagination. And now the most vivid example of all stares at us from the heart of our own community. Tragedy moves from background to foreground when people personally engage life's limits. We tend to think of tragedy -- and death is no exception -- as a kind of final curtain. The end of the line. But the Christian message comes in an important question -- addressed all over the place in scripture -- Does tragedy have the final word? The scriptures today spin tragic stories into our foreground. Elimelech married Naomi and had two sons. In a time of famine Elimelech took his family and left Bethlehem in search of food. He settled on the plateau of Moab and later died. The sons married Moabite women. One was Orpah and the other Ruth. Naomi took the two young women under her wing. After about ten years both sons died. The three widows were in a very difficult situation. Naomi proposed that each of them return to their original homes in hopes of being taken back in and perhaps, for the younger women, finding another husband. Orpah departed in tears but Ruth stayed with Naomi and pledged to remain with her whatever might come. This passage is a good example of the insight that context is everything. The verses containing Ruth's pledge of fidelity to Naomi have been put to music and are often sung at weddings. Couples are often surprised to discover that Ruth spoke them to her mother in law and not her husband. The fidelity between the two women exemplified the faithfulness and love in human relationships called for as the basis of the Law. Ruth's response to Naomi's kindness and care was also an example of the kind of response that God wants from all of us. New life comes out of death. How people respond to tragedy indicates their character and devotion. The widowed Ruth is offered a choice: She can go with her widowed mother-in-law Naomi, herself a foreigner in Moab, or return to her Moabite household. Ruth decides to remain with Naomi and they sojourn to Judah, a land foreign to Ruth. Even today Ruth's words touch our hearts: "Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God my God". These two widows, knowing tragic circumstances, return to Bethlehem. Tragedy yields to new life. Resurrection The Gospel of Luke presents a Jesus who is not bound by the longstanding Jewish prejudice against Samaritans. He skirts the border between Galilee and Samaria warily lest, like any Jew in those parts, he risk being stoned. But infectious disease respects no boundaries, no traditions, no races. Significantly, Jesus doesn't choose to push the lepers away. And doesn't join in the rush to push its victims out of sight and out of mind. Instead, he faces the tragedy -- if you will -- and looks through it to the new life he expects and anticipates on the far side of the present catastrophe. Jesus responds to the piteous cries of the human wreckage confronting him. And there's a cure. Luke makes a point of the one Samaritan's return, but for Jesus it is the man's faith that sets him apart, not his identity as the ancient enemy of the Jewish people. And, again, new life came out of a place that looked like death and nothing but death. Thinking about resurrection tends to bring Christians around to thinking about baptism. That is when we're being careful about living an examined life, really working to put two and two together. Finding ways to bring faithfulness and service and hope into play in our real lives. Early Christians referred to baptism colloquially as "crossing over Jordan", just as the Israelites crossed over Jordan into a promised land. When you try to examine life in the face of tragedy, I suggest you give some thought to what baptism is about. The constant determination of God to speak to us in generation after generation, across millennia, through scripture and through the sacraments -- like baptism, and eucharist -- and show us real evidence that life comes last, not death. That rebirth is a fundamental pattern of life that always trumps tragedy. -- Mark Lewis Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org. Readings from the Bible for this Sunday. Links to additional sermons by Mark Lewis will be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page. © 2001 -Church of Our Saviour Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links http://www.secaucus.org/oursaviour Webmaster - DRoberts@Secaucus.org